


knives don't have your back

by manusinistra



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3500945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manusinistra/pseuds/manusinistra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lexa is twelve when the Commander is discovered in her. </p>
<p>(The making of a leader, pre-show to 2x15.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	knives don't have your back

Lexa is twelve when the Commander is discovered in her. She doesn’t quite know how to feel – it is an honor, of course, but there’s also a strange unease to the future it sketches around her: the world has designs on her beyond understanding, and from now on her life will never truly be her own.

At night in bed she looks down at her hands and wonders where their loyalties lie. They are hers but they are also the Commander’s, and she’s not sure that those things are the same. 

;;

She says as much to Anya once, during training, and promptly finds herself on her back.

“Whoever those hands belong to, they need a better grip. You can talk philosophy once you can keep hold of your sword.”

;;

As time passes, Lexa finds that many things come before philosophy: training, council, taking care of her people, making war and recovering from it. Even decisions that reverberate for years permit little reflection: when a rival leader pulls a knife during supposed peace talks, she has the space of a second to act (to lodge her own knife in his throat – his blood seals the alliance between their peoples). 

She has to trust that something in her knows the right way, for to debate the cost of an action is to lose your part in determining it. Still, sometimes, when her hands are heavy with death, she looks down at them and wonders. 

;; 

Costia is unexpected.

They meet in a village near the edge of Clan territory, farther north than Lexa has yet been. There are rumblings of trouble with the Ice Nation and she travels there to take the measure of them. 

It’s a slow business, and one day Lexa has the unaccustomed pleasure of a free afternoon: she dresses in ordinary clothes, escapes her guard, and seeks out a river she’s been told of. When she finds it, she finds Costia, too.

The sight of her strikes Lexa dumb: long-limbed and brazenly bare, and when Lexa’s eyes make their way to her face she’s met with an amused grin.

“I didn’t know anyone would be here,” Lexa says, stumbling on the words. There’s no trace of the Commander in this moment – Lexa feels small and finite and utterly out of her depth.  

Costia’s smile grows.

“I don’t mind sharing, soldier girl.” 

;;

The rumblings continue, and when Lexa returns to that village months later her heart quickens in a way that has nothing to do with strategy. 

At the welcome feast she sees Costia: she’s tending to meat roasting over an open fire, rushing about to keep plates and cups full. When she reaches Lexa’s table, Lexa cannot look anywhere else.  

“You grace us with your presence, Heda,” she says. They are the right words – those required by the night and the feast and the armor strapped to Lexa’s shoulders – but Lexa does not want them. She wants Costia for herself, with intensity she is unprepared for, and the want grows bolder at the way Costia lingers, at the play of firelight over her face.  

“You don’t have to call me that,” Lexa says.

“How would you have me address you?”

She’s leaning in closer now, and Lexa can feel the heat of her body.

_As yours_ , Lexa thinks, and though she does not speak Costia’s eyes flash with recognition.

;;

When her hands slide over Costia’s skin they are hers and hers alone. 

And then the Ice Nation strikes, and Costia’s skin goes cold, and Lexa surrenders herself to the Commander.

;;

Clarke, too, is unexpected.

But where Costia was an escape from duty, Clarke feels like a culmination of it. When Lexa watches her bring Lincoln back – watches a small, pale girl fallen from the sky accomplish what generations of her healers never have – she realizes this: Clarke is why she’s the Commander. It’s her purpose to survive contact with the sky, to forge a way for her people and Clarke’s to exist together.

And so with Clarke there is always the world, the weight of so many lives set on each of their shoulders.

(Even in kissing Clarke the beat of war drums through her veins.)

;;

When the Mountain's messenger appears, Lexa is not winning. She's not losing, not completely, not yet, but the ground is drenched in blood and too much of it comes from her people and the real battle has not even begun. Who knows what awaits them behind the Mountain’s door, how many lives will be lost to it.

The offer is this: retreat and survive. All her people will be released, for the Mountain can live on Sky blood alone.

“And just so you know,” the man says. “We’ve got missiles trained on your two nearest villages. In a few hours, we’ll have a dozen more.”

His eyes are cold, and Lexa thinks he might enjoy blowing them all up, exterminating the "savages."

She agrees without hesitation.

If there were time for philosophy, she might explain it like this: Clarke offers Lexa her trust. The Mountain offers the Commander her people. There is no scale in the world that would tip in Clarke’s favor. (And if Lexa wishes she could make one – well. Even in another life, she would not be free to.)


End file.
